As superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the East Coast are awaking without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation's largest city unusually vacant and dark.
 
New York was among the hardest hit, with its financial heart in Lower Manhattan shuttered for a second day and seawater cascading into the still-gaping construction pit at the World Trade Center.

"While heavy rain and snow still impacts the northeast, we are on the cold side of Sandy. We are near records this morning with most of us in the 40s. It’s still breezy too, so the wind chill is playing a factor this morning," said WFTV meteorologist Brian Shields.

Video Blogs: Jorge Estevez is in NYC as city braces for Sandy

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Special Section: Hurricane Season 2012

The storm that made landfall in New Jersey on Monday evening with 80 mph sustained winds killed at least 16 people in seven states. It cut power to more than 6 million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Ohio, caused scares at two nuclear power plants and stopped the presidential campaign cold.

WFTV's Jorge Estevez was in Manhattan as Sandy came ashore and watched as water from the Hudson River rose, taking many in lower Manhattan by surprise.

Channel 9’s Jorge Estevez is in New York City.  You can watch his video blogs by clicking here!

The massive storm reached well into the Midwest. Chicago officials warned residents to stay away from the Lake Michigan shore as the city prepares for high winds and large waves.

"This will be one for the record books," said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Consolidated Edison, which had more than 670,000 customers without power in and around New York City.
 
An unprecedented 13-foot surge of seawater -- 3 feet above the previous record -- gushed into Gotham, inundating tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system that powers Wall Street, and sent hospital patients and tourists scrambling for safety. Skyscrapers swayed and creaked in winds that partially toppled a crane 74 stories above Midtown.

Remnants of the former Category 1 hurricane were forecast to head across Pennsylvania before taking another sharp turn into western New York by Wednesday morning. Although weakening as it goes, the massive storm -- which caused wind warnings from Florida to Canada -- will continue to bring heavy rain and local flooding, said Daniel Brown, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Sandy, which killed 69 people in the Caribbean before making its way up the Eastern Seaboard, began to hook left at midday Monday toward the New Jersey coast. Even before it made landfall, crashing waves had claimed an old, 50-foot piece of Atlantic City's world-famous Boardwalk.

New York University's Tisch Hospital was forced to evacuate 200 patients after its backup generator failed. NYU Medical Dean Robert Grossman said patients -- among them 20 babies from neonatal intensive care that were on battery-powered respirators -- had to be carried down staircases and to dozens of waiting ambulances.
 
Not only was the subway shut down, but the Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey was closed, as was a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and several other spans were closed due to high winds.

Trading at the New York Stock Exchange was canceled again Tuesday -- the first time the exchange suspended operations for two consecutive days due to weather since an 1888 blizzard struck the city.
 
Airlines canceled around 12,500 flights because of the storm, a number that was expected to grow.

About 360,000 people in 30 Connecticut towns were urged to leave their homes under mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders.

Despite dire warnings and evacuation orders that began Saturday, many stayed put.  
 
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie -- whose own family had to move to the executive mansion after his home in Mendham, far from the storm's center, lost power -- criticized the mayor of Atlantic City for opening shelters there instead of forcing people out.
 
Eugenia Buono, 77, and her neighbor, Elaine DiCandio, 76, were among several dozen people who took shelter at South Kingstown High School in Narragansett, R.I. They live on Harbor Island, which is connected to the mainland by a causeway.
 
"I'm not an idiot," said Buono, who survived hurricanes Carol in 1954 and Bob in 1991. "People are very foolish if they don't leave."